ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - Superstorm Sandy slammed into the New Jersey coastline with 80 mph winds Monday night and hurled an unprecedented 13-foot surge of seawater at New York City, threatening its subways and the electrical system that powers Wall Street. At least four deaths were blamed on the storm, and the presidential campaign ground to a halt a week before Election Day.

Sandy knocked out power to at least 3.1 million people, and New York's main utility said large sections of Manhattan had been plunged into darkness by the storm. Water pressed into the island from three sides.

Just before its center reached land, the storm was stripped of hurricane status, but the distinction was purely technical, based on its shape and internal temperature. It still packed hurricane-force wind, and forecasters were careful to say it remained every bit as dangerous to the 50 million people in its path.

As the storm closed in, it smacked the boarded-up big cities of the Northeast corridor — Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston — with stinging rain and gusts of more than 85 mph. It also converged with a cold-weather system that turned it into a superstorm, a monstrous hybrid consisting not only of rain and high wind but snow.

The southern Oregon coast has been put under a tsunami advisory after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake Saturday night in British Columbia triggered a tsunami.

Coastal areas from the Douglas-Lane County line -- 10 miles southwest of Florence -- to Gualala Point in California -- 80 miles Northwest of San Francisco -- were put under the advisory around 10:45 p.m.on Saturday.

An advisory means the tsunami is capable of producing strong currents or waves that could be dangerous to people near the water. The currents could be dangerous to swimmers, boats and coastal structures and may continue for several hours after the initial wave arrives.

Check www. tsunami.gov for frequent updates about warnings and advisories.

The Alaska and British Columbia coasts are under a tsunami warning and people living near the beach or in low-lying areas near those coasts have been told to immediately move to higher ground and away from harbors or inlets.

For four years, the right-wing calculus has been that prolonging and deepening the suffering of American families was a small price to pay - if it would put them back in power. This approach became the cornerstone of Republican strategy the day of the inauguration - when GOP leaders like Paul Ryan first sat down to plot against the new president. It was true in 2009, when Mitch McConnell openly admitted that the top GOP priority was defeating Obama. It was true just a few weeks ago, when Senate Republicans blocked the Veterans Jobs Act. They believe that by increasing America's economic pain, they can increase their own political gain.

Their theory is this: if enough dead bodies pile up on the beach, Americans will fire the lifeguard - and Republicans can get the lifeguard's job.

That is why Republicans in Congress have blocked traditionally conservative ideas like tax cuts for small businesses, simply because the President proposed them.

They have relentlessly opposed commonsense policies like helping young people pay less on student loans or making sure more folks whose mortgages are underwater can refinance their homes. They did all they could to block passage of the stimulus bill. They conveniently ignored the fact that the stimulus embraced many conservative principles: one-third was to help states and cities that were struggling to keep teachers and first-responders on the job. Another one-third was for tax cuts for 95% of Americans.

If they had stopped there, it would have been bad. But they went one step further. They brought our nation to the brink of default over a debt limit they had always raised in the past.

Why aren't Republicans being taken to task for trying to wreck the recovery?WED OCT 24, 2012 AT 12:37 PM PDT * by Lefty Coaster (at Kos)

On January 20, 2009 Republicans gathered with Frank Lutz and agreed to do their utmost to wreck all efforts to foster an economic recovery under President Obama. Republicans put Party over Country in the most cynical political ploy this country has ever seen. Mich McConnell laid out his party's cynical strategy like this: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

Why isn't Republican economic sabotage the number one issue of this election? Like it deserves to be!

The British Press has done a much better job of covering this important story than the recalcitrant US Press. This comes from the Guardian:

Did Republicans deliberately crash the US economy?By Michael Cohen

Republicans have opposed a lion's share of stimulus measures that once they supported, such as a payroll tax break, which they grudgingly embraced earlier this year. Even unemployment insurance, a relatively uncontroversial tool for helping those in an economic downturn, has been consistently held up by Republicans or used as a bargaining chip for more tax cuts. Ten years ago, prominent conservatives were loudly making the case for fiscal stimulus to get the economy going; today, they treat such ideas like they're the plague.

Traditionally, during economic recessions, Republicans have been supportive of loose monetary policy. Not this time. Rather, Republicans have upbraided Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve, for even considering policies that focus on growing the economy and creating jobs.

And then, there is the fact that since the original stimulus bill passed in February of 2009, Republicans have made practically no effort to draft comprehensive job creation legislation. Instead, they continue to pursue austerity policies, which reams of historical data suggest harms economic recovery and does little to create jobs. In fact, since taking control of the House of Representatives in 2011, Republicans have proposed hardly a single major jobs bill that didn't revolve, in some way, around their one-stop solution for all the nation's economic problems: more tax cuts.

A different election boycott group has called for public burnings of voter registration cards at local polling places everywhere on this coming election day -- Tuesday, November 6th, 2012. This is not only a great idea, but it's a great opportunity for the Vote for Nobody Campaign! Unlike other election boycott groups, we're NOT ONLY boycotting the 2012 elections but preparing to campaign against voting straight on through to 2016 minimum. That means these events will be a great chance for VFN supporters to meet new friends who might be looking for other acyivism options on November 7th. Show up with flyers and signs promoting The Vote for Nobody Campaign with our URL http://www.anti-politics.ws to help build a future without politics and the state!

United Nations-affiliated election monitors from Europe and central Asia will be at polling places around the U.S. looking for voter suppression activities by conservative groups, a concern raised by civil rights groups during a meeting this week. The intervention has drawn criticism from a prominent conservative-leaning group combating election fraud.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a United Nations partner on democratization and human rights projects, will deploy 44 observers from its human rights office around the country on Election Day to monitor an array of activities, including potential disputes at polling places. It's part of a broader observation mission that will send out an additional 80 to 90 members of parliament from nearly 30 countries.

iberal-leaning civil rights groups met with representatives from the OSCE this week to raise their fears about what they say are systematic efforts to suppress minority voters likely to vote for President Obama.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP and the ACLU, among other groups, warned this month in a letter to Daan Everts, a senior official with OSCE, of “a coordinated political effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans — particularly traditionally disenfranchised groups like minorities.”

This is just within the past few days, becoming much more widely known, and
talked about; and it IS most definitely an issue that is crucial to having a viable
authentic democratic form of governance in the US of A.

I'd love to see some payback for how ACORN was drummed out of existence for
nothing, for a few trifling and unintended pranks like some idiot writing in Mickey
Mouse and ACORN not catching it in time before it was turned in. minor stuff.

This GOP ELECTION FRAUD HOWEVER IS PREMEDITATED AND DELIBERATEthese are not petty crimes, they are FELONIES, and this goes all the way up to the
GOP chain of command, straight to the Republican National Committee itself.

If Obama doesn't bring this up, who will? Who else has a bully enough pulpit to
do so, to shut down this travesty before we have a replay of 2000 and 2004 on our
hands?

Third instance of voter registration dumping found in VirginiaBy David Ferguson
Friday, October 19, 2012 14:24 EDT

A third instance of fraudulent voter registration has been uncovered in the important swing state of Virginia, where a Republican consultant has been arrested and thousands of discarded voter registration forms were recovered from a dumpster earlier this week. According to the Not Larry Sabato blog, a law student at James Madison University registered to vote on campus, but found when she tried to verify the change online, found that her form had never been submitted.

On Thursday, Raw Story reported that 31-year-old Colin Small, a Republican operative employed by Pinpoint, a firm contracted by Republican Party of Virginia, was arrested and charged with “four counts of destruction of voter registration applications, eight counts of disclosure of voter registration application, and one count of obstruction of justice” for throwing active voter registration forms into a dumpster.

Not Larry Sabato blogger Ben Trippett wrote that 2 to 3 weeks ago, a woman, identified only by her first name, Lucy, attempted to update her voter registration at a table on the campus of James Madison University.

The Virginia State Board of Elections announced Friday that it will not ask the state’s attorney general to investigate the Republican operative accused of tossing out eight completed voter registration forms, rejecting Democratic-led efforts at a full investigation into the alleged tampering.

State Senator and chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus Donald McEachin had called for a complete investigation of the incident, in which 31-year-old Colin Small is accused of deliberately discarding valid voter registration forms.

“This is simply too serious an issue,” McEachin said in a statement. “Voting is the bedrock of our democracy and we, as Virginians, deserve to know exactly what happened, how widespread the abuse and under whose orders, if any, the individual in question acted.”

et the board decided not to request a formal investigation by Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, leaving the matter up to local authorities. A spokesman for Cuccinelli’s office told the Washington Post that the attorney general could only review the case if the State Board of Elections asked him to do so.

A labor specialist on Thom Hartman explains about how this practice HAD BEEN ILLEGAL
EVER SINCE 1970's, and how CITIZENS UNITED CHANGED ALL THAT, so that it is now
entirely legal.&feature=player_embedded

And now guess who's been out there taking FULL advantage of this new perk for
GOP/1%'s bought/$old politicians? You guessed it. Gov. Rmoney is. So as not
to duplicate, here is another DU OP on that subject, with an audio of Mitt talking
this up on the campaign trail. Mitt does this at very end of this 30 minute audio http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=269981

OR

&feature=player_embedded#!

Did anyone even see this coming? I hadn't heard anything about this practice, of
employers telling workers how to vote "if they'd like to keep their jobs". JEEE_sus!!
.. This is the first I've heard of this. Did I miss something? This is really not
good.